


my love is a sucker bet

by lacrimalis



Category: Dead by Daylight (Video Game)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Drug Addiction, F/M, Mixed POV, Self-Harm, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-03
Updated: 2018-12-09
Packaged: 2019-09-05 13:25:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16811515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lacrimalis/pseuds/lacrimalis
Summary: Ace doesn't blame the others for being so morose. They just don't have his perspective and experience! Sure, the Entity's realm seems like a real drag on its face - but there's no debts to pay, no need to eat, and none of them will age or permanently die. Seems like a solid deal to Ace!The sobriety is a definite drawback, but he figures he can't win 'em all.





	1. bet

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [dark noise](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16042724) by [raycats](https://archiveofourown.org/users/raycats/pseuds/raycats). 



Ace couldn't believe his luck.

He'd clawed his way out of poverty with his wits and card sharking, and that had been all right -- but then he'd developed an addiction to it. The smoky casino floors and complementary cigars, the free drinks that made his worries drown away... The way his loaded dice felt in the palm of his hand, and the drunken, disbelieving cheers of the fellow patrons and onlookers as he won again, and again... If he were feeling maudlin, he might even say he'd fallen in love with it.

The lifestyle was a tantalizing lure, and it seemed like it wasn't long after he'd finally gotten enough money to get by that he was unloading it all back into the bellies of casinos and nightclubs. He took out a few loans, nothing too big at first -- until it was something very, _very_ big. He managed to charm and cajole his way out of a few payments with his silver tongue and his easy-going smile, but after a while the threats to break his legs were outnumbering booty calls on his phone.

Ace high-tailed it out of town, eyes on the horizon, and he wondered just how long his luck would hold out before they managed to track him down.

And then he had ended up _here_.

It was like a dream come true.

From what the others told him, this was a place outside of time and space. The people trying to track him down might have been clever -- but, Ace thought with a smile, he wouldn't bet on the odds of them finding him here.

When Ace takes in all they have to say with little more than a 'huh' and a thoughtful smile, the girl with the pigtails -- Meg, wasn't it? -- furrows her brow in something like concern. She chews her lip before saying, "Ace, I'm... not sure you understand the gravity of the situation."

"Huh? Oh, sure I do. Trapped in a pocket dimension, ritual sacrifice, murder most foul, etcetera, etcetera... Pretty serious stuff!" he says with a grin. He is taking this _very_ seriously.

Dwight's expression is full of something like despair. Meg looks like she would've been more convinced of Ace's sincerity if he hadn't spoken at all. "Right," she says slowly. Then, "A trial can begin at any time without warning, so in the meantime just stick around the campfire. You can go into the woods, too, but I wouldn't recommend going alone..."

Ace lowers his sunglasses and throws Meg a wink. "If you wanna drag me into the woods, babe, all you have to do is ask."

Meg doesn't respond apart from standing up and walking away. Dwight groans and says "dude," plaintively.

"What?" Ace says. "Wait a second -- don't tell me you're all trapped together in limbo, and you _haven't_ been fucking on the regular?"

Dwight's face twists up like a teetotaler who just took a shot of cheap tequila. Ace can see it, too -- showing the kid how to put salt on his hand and throw back a shot, then laughing as he tears up and fumbles the lime. And that gives him an idea.

"Hey," he says to the group at large, raising his voice to be heard. Dwight buries his face in his hands. "Is there any alcohol around here?"

"Nope," comes a voice jagged with rust. Ace turns to the old man -- Bill, he remembered, because the guy looked like a Bill -- as he goes on, "Damn shame, too."

"Ugh," Ace says, ever-present grin faltering in the face of such poor tidings. "Well what do you guys do for fun around here?"

"Not die?" Dwight says, like a slightly incredulous question.

Ace deflates. "Sounds boring."

"It beats the alternative," mutters the girl drawing by the tree line.

Ace thinks he'd rather die than become a sober celibate. "Speak for yourself," he mutters right back. He slides down the log he's been seated on and stretches his legs out toward the crackling fire. Be nice if it could warm him, too, but Ace supposes his days of creature comforts are over. He folds his arms behind his head and yawns. "Wake me up when it's time to get murdered."

Dwight sighs and leaves the circle of logs around the campfire. In the absence of his own conversation, the quiet din of the others' drifts on the air and mingles with the hissing flames. Feet step around him, displacing leaves with murmuring _shhf shhfs_.

The quiet voices turn muddy and indistinct as Ace dozes off.

* * *

Ace goes a long time without getting killed. Everyone looks so downtrodden after a trial that he can’t really brag about it no matter how much he wants to. But he’s pretty sure he’s setting a record.

And it isn’t because he’s screwing anyone over, either. Sure, he gets a few choice words from whoever’s on the hook when he opens a chest before rescuing them -- but he still _rescues_ them. It just makes sense to prioritize these things. Searching a chest takes longer, and the killers _know_ when someone’s been rescued. Ace has seen it a dozen times, though he doesn’t understand it.

But it doesn’t take understanding to follow his intuition. And Ace’s has rarely ever failed him -- not when it was a matter of life and death.

The killer they’re up against this time wears a white mask, and is probably a dab hand at darts with the way she throws that axe. She also hums under her breath, which creeps Ace the fuck out.

Ace plugs away at a generator in the corner of the map, alone. They’ve gotten two done, but just as many people have ended up on the hook. Scratch that -- a piercing scream makes it three. Ace wipes the sweat from his brow and looks again at the frayed wires before him. Now, which one is correct…? He takes a guess and quickly secures two of the wires together with a length of electrical tape from his toolbox. The generator purrs encouragingly.

Ace grins.

He leans back to take a break and look around. Lucky he did, too -- or he might not have heard the Huntress’s humming over the sound of the generator. He scrambles to his feet and searches frantically for a place to hide, but he doesn’t have many options. There’s only the brick wall that seals them into the rain-sodden forest, and the direction the killer is coming from.

Ace’s eyes land on a bright red storage locker. He’s seen Dwight hiding in these things all over the place, and Ace thinks it seems like an obvious place to look-- but then he’ll see Dwight hale and hearty, waving him over toward the exit gate at the end of the match. So clearly it’s working for him.

Running out of time and short on options, Ace creeps as quietly as he can toward the locker. He opens the door and steps inside.

The heartbeat in his head grows louder, coasting on the wake of the Huntress’s melody. He’s experienced the phenomena before, had it explained to him -- it meant the killers were close. If the point was for them to get ritually sacrificed, it seemed counterintuitive to give them a warning when that inevitable end was approaching, but maybe whatever force was keeping them here wanted to be sporting. Either way, Ace counts small blessings and holds his breath as he listens.

The Huntress kicks the generator, and Ace winces. He’d been almost done, too. Then he hears the clatter of tools and metal, and it takes him a moment to realize she’s knocked over his toolbox. _No need to be sour,_ Ace thinks, grinning at the Huntress’s frustration.

He hears footsteps walk past the locker, then vanish into the distance. The heartbeat goes with it, and then finally the humming.

Ace sighs with relief. He reaches for the door again, but a shiver down his spine stops him. He can hear the Huntress returning. Ace flounders, panics, but if he leaves the locker now she’ll surely hear him.

Struck with a stupid, _stupid_ idea, Ace grabs the inside handles of the door and pulls them toward him.

Almost immediately, he feels a tug, and the locker doors rattle.

A pause.

Then another tug, harder, and the doors nearly buckle but hold firm. Ace laughs in disbelief under his breath. No _way_ this was working.

Roaring with rage, the Huntress slams the doors with her fists, making the locker shake and tilt. Ace yelps with fright, releasing the handles as if burned.

The Huntress throws open the locker doors with such force that they hit the limits of their hinges, wobbling and swayed disconsolately between them.

Ace grins nervously, holding his hands up in surrender. “Lovely weather we’re having, isn’t it?”

The Huntress buries her axe into the back of the locker, coming within a hair’s breadth of his ear. _Guess she’s not one for small talk,_ he thinks, as she lifts him onto her shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

Then she drops him. Ace grunts in pain and looks up at her. She’s taking hatchets out of the locker and securing them to her belt. Ace groans. She hadn’t even thought he was _in_ there -- she just needed more ammo? That’ll be the last time he acts on Dwight’s example.

Then he remembers something Dwight said around the campfire once -- he’d been deflecting some kind of compliment or something about a job well done in a trial. Classic Dwight. What was it he’d said?

He’d laughed self-deprecatingly, and Ace had thought the kid _really_ needed to learn how to take a compliment. Then he’d said, “Yeah, but even if I escape, I always end up on the hook at least once every trial.”

Ace curses and tries to crawl away, but the Huntress has turned away from the open locker (Ace’s antics have made it so the doors don’t close right any more). She grabs his ankle with all the strength her size and musculature implies, and she drags Ace toward her.

“Oof,” Ace says. “Easy on the goods, sister.” The Huntress picks him up, but that doesn’t stop his blathering. “Damn, do you work out? What’s your secret? I’d _kill_ for delts like these.” The Huntress tightens her grip on Ace’s midsection, crushing his stomach into her shoulder. Ace wheezes. “What, do I gotta join your cult to find out?”

She stops, and Ace sways on her shoulder. He isn’t sure what he’ll say if she drops him on the ground and offers to initiate him into the cult of ritual sacrifice.

But then Ace realizes she hadn’t stopped on his account.

She’d arrived at a hook.

“N-No,” Ace says, “no-no-no-no-no, I’m uh, I’m good, thanks. You can put me down now -- on the ground I mean, not the--”

The hook pierces his back, scraping along his left shoulder blade until it slides into the pliant flesh behind it. Ace screams as the fishhook emerges from his chest, ripping and tearing at anything in its path. His sternum aches -- he thinks it’s wedged its way between two of his ribs. When the Huntress releases him, his weight drops on the hook, and he swears the rib above the hook’s point snaps.

He isn’t sure if it pierced his left lung or his heart, but breathing is difficult now. The pain is excruciating. Ace has taken plenty of beatings in his life, broken a few bones, sure. Nothing really rates, compared to this.

Looking down through his sunglasses, he sees the Huntress staring at him, slapping her axe in her palm as if daring him to say something smart.

Ace grins cheekily. Far be it from him to disappoint a waiting audience. He grabs the slippery, bloodied hook with both hands and lifts himself up, the better to speak. “You know, I’ve never given any thought to being the receiving partner,” he wheezes, “but now I see I didn’t know what I was missing!” Ace flutters his eyelashes at the Huntress, though the effect is diminished by his sunglasses and his pained grimace. “We should do this again sometime! What are you doing after this?”

The Huntress snarls and slashes Ace’s thigh with a hatchet.

“Ow! Hey!” Ace cries, but the Huntress stalks off, shoulders set in a hard, determined line.

Ace’s hands slip on the hook, and he hisses in pain. Carefully, he wipes the blood off the hook with his sleeve and resettles his grip.

What had they said before? He’s pretty sure they warned him not to struggle if he finds himself on the hook, and to just wait for help to arrive. But Ace can hear generators chiming to life, hear the screams that mean the Huntress is in hot pursuit. The exit gates power on, and he's got the pulse of how a trial works by now. The chances of anyone coming to save him are dwindling by the second.

“Fuck it,” Ace grumbles, and he grabs the top of the hook with all his might.

It's no use. His arms are shaking too much, and his left shoulder aches where the tip of the hook grazed the bone. For all that he's succeeded so far at sneaking around, he doesn't have a knack for this yet. He has to laugh when he thinks about _practicing_ at getting off the hook, and his muscles contract painfully around the wound in his chest.

Well. No time like the present, if he needs the practice.

Ace reaches for the hook again and tries to push himself off. The angle isn't right, and this time he sees the spiderlegs materializing around him when he fails. Reaching, grasping. His breath hitches and quickens, and he reaches for the hook one more time.

His hand slips, and the cluster of legs lunges for him, piercing him, and -- oh, so _that's_ what it feels like when his lungs have been punctured.

A strange feeling overcomes him, like he's only half there. The pain becomes distant and vague, like a memory he only half remembers, and he grins defiantly as the Entity swallows him whole.

* * *

“I was coming to save you,” Dwight protests back at the campfire.

Ace shrugs easily. “I didn't want you guys to pass up the exit on my account.”

Nea and Meg -- the other two who’d been in the trial with them -- glance between themselves, and they shrug, too. They seem to accept the explanation as easily as Ace has, but Dwight still looks like he thinks he's failed somehow.

Ace slaps him companionably on the shoulder. “Don't sweat it, kid. We all gotta die sometime.”

Dwight jumps at the unexpected touch, but then he slumps with a sigh. “I guess,” he says miserably.

Ace pats his shoulder twice before dropping his hand. Dwight looks like he misses the human contact, and Ace marvels at how repressed this lot is. Good grief. “There's a good sport,” Ace says. He starts wandering off, hoping he'll find Bill to bum a cigarette, maybe. Then he stops. “Oh, but I _did_ learn something from that trial.”

Dwight perks up like a dog smelling a treat. “Oh yeah?”

“Yeah,” Ace says. “Lockers ain't shit.”

Dwight looks embarrassed. “Y-Yeah…”

Ace raises his eyebrows. “Cut that locker shit out, Dwight.”

Dwight's face turns red and he crosses his arms. “All right, all right! Jeez…”

Satisfied that Dwight has been suitably admonished, Ace goes back to the task at hand. Laurie tells him that Bill is out searching for supplies in the fog, and Ace parks his ass on a log and taps his leg waiting for the old-timer to return.

Eventually, Bill emerges from the tree line with Jake and Claudette. They have a good haul -- medkits and tool boxes. Ace thinks back to the one he’d lost in the trial and eyes the new ones with longing -- but he holds off. There’s something he wants even more than a new toolkit.

“Hey, Bill,” Ace cajoles as he stands, “Billy buddy.”

Bill sets the supplies down by the edge of the campfire and grunts. “What d’you want?” he grumbles.

“Any alcohol in those medkits?” The new girl’s been keeping to herself since she got here, but she looks up sharply at Ace’s question. Apparently she doesn’t think it merits breaking her self-imposed vow of silence, since she stays quiet and looks away quickly.

Bill looks amused, and also like he thinks Ace is _very_ stupid. “ _Rubbing_ alcohol.”

“Nice,” Ace says, reaching for one of the medkits.

Claudette slaps his hands away. “That’ll kill you!”

“What _won’t?”_ Ace rejoinders, but at her unamused look, he blows a breath out the side of his mouth. “Sorry, Dr. Morel.”

Claudette gets a look a lot like Bill’s on her face - like she can't quite believe Ace is that stupid. Once she’s satisfied he isn’t about to drink any of the contents of the medkits, she goes to sit by a post-trial-jitters Meg.

Ace looks around and sees Bill has already gone back to the tree line. It’s where he usually likes to smoke, as a nicety to anyone who wants to sit around the cold campfire. Ace privately thinks that if anyone has a mind to complain about cigarette smoke in ritual sacrifice limbo, their priorities are in all the wrong places.

Ace saunters with faux-casualness over to where Bill is leaning against a tree. “Speaking of stuff that’ll kill you,” Ace murmurs conspiratorially, “got any cigs?”

Bill pulls out a cigarette and lights it. “Nope,” he says.

Ace bites his lip and groans pathetically, gives the best puppy eyes he can manage over his shades. “C’mon, boss, I earned it!”

“What,” Bill says, taking a drag. “You finally bite the dust in a trial?”

Ace straightens up, preening. “As a matter of fact, I did!” Bill raises his eyebrows in invitation, and Ace describes his encounter with the Huntress, and his painful demise, in excruciating detail. “So,” Ace concludes, “I could _really_ use a smoke right about now.”

Bill taps the ash off his cigarette. He smoked the whole thing while Ace was recounting his sordid tale. He pulls out another cigarette, and Ace’s blood thrums with anticipation.

“Nah,” Bill says, putting the cigarette in his mouth and lighting up.

“ _What?_ ” Ace whines. He’s too upset to admit that Bill really had him for a second there. It was a good fakeout, he thinks grudgingly. “Why not?”

“You died like a fuckin’ idiot is why.” Bill inhales deeply on the filter, and blows smoke in Ace’s direction. The smell sends addict’s pangs all the way down to his shaking fingers as Ace sucks it in. “Now get lost so I can actually _enjoy_ this one.”

Ace knows Bill thinks he’s a pathetic idiot, and that isn’t likely to change any time soon. But he’ll probably stay in the man’s good graces if he actually does as he says for now. Ace manages a grin and holds his hands up. “All right, all right. Fair point.” He winks. “I’ll try to die smarter next time.”

Bill scowls and makes a shooing motion with the hand holding his cigarette, and Ace bows out. He makes his way back to the campfire with all his disappointment tucked away -- slouching and dragging his feet would probably be seen as trying to garner sympathy, and Bill’s made it clear his sympathy is a little harder won than that.

Ace needs something to do with his hands. He refuses to fidget and fret, conditioned after a life of gambling to keep his poker face intact and tamp down any tells of vulnerability. He digs his hands into his jacket pocket, and he hits something smooth. For a deliriously joyous moment, he thinks the little rectangle might be a pack of cigarettes, but the texture isn’t right -- and when he pulls it out of his pocket, he sees that it’s his deck of trick cards.

Ace’s smile pulls to one side in puzzlement. Had that always been there? Object permanence in this place is kinda dicey, so he doesn’t dwell on it. Instead he splays the cards in his hands, enjoys their slickness, their familiar frayed edges.

He looks around the campfire. Laurie, Dwight, Nea, Meg, Claudette, and Jake are in the immediate area, engaged in quiet conversation or staring thoughtfully into the flames. And the new girl -- Fang? Sounds like a gang name -- is at the edge of the furthest log, off in her own world.

“Hey,” Ace says to the group at large, “you guys like card tricks?”  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one goes out to all you sinners!
> 
> I've been wanting to write AceManda for a while. It just makes sense??? And our based savior [raycats](https://archiveofourown.org/users/raycats/pseuds/raycats) is out here making [the best DocFeng content on the PLANET!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16042724/chapters/37450052) i just love what she's done with the place!! and when I mentioned wanting to write this she said "if you write it I'll make it canon to dark noise" and I was like BET so now we're here!!!
> 
> thank y'all for reading! comments are cherished and appreciated and they fuel the sin machine in my guts. so please let me know what you think! <:


	2. bogey

Ace loses track of the newcomers.

He isn't sure if David King was there before or after him, and Laurie - who'd kept mostly to herself, from what he saw - is suddenly spending a lot of time with this shaggy-haired kid who looks like he doesn't know the meaning of the word 'sleep'. Ace picks up their names when others call out to them, and just acts like he's always known. Feigning familiarity with perfect strangers is something he's used to. Easier to get them to bring their guard down if they think they know you, or if you can act like you have something in common.

Here in the nightmare, it's no less useful. Ace knows he'd get a lot fewer people going out of their way to yank him off the hook if they knew he didn't care about them one way or another. One more face around the campfire makes little difference to him.

Easy come, easy go, another one bites the dust - he knows the drill by now.

But Ace notices immediately when Detective Tapp arrives.

He's never liked cops, and in his experience the feeling has always been mutual. Ace's charm and cunning always seem to backfire spectacularly when he tries them on law enforcement. So he tends to make himself scarce whenever a badge enters the room.

Granted, these moments tend to coincide with times when Ace is doing something of dubious legality. But that's just bad timing, as far as he's concerned.

So when he sees him sitting at the campfire, uniform and all, Ace is determined to get in his good graces before the man can catch wise to Ace's past. It’s funny - even now he's planning contingencies for eventualities that might never come to pass. But it's that self-preservation again. Cozy up to whoever might pose a threat, and dissuade them from being one - or put yourself in a position to be a greater threat than they are.

He picks his way over to the fire as Laurie, Jake, and Feng Min go their separate ways. The Hag had been in perfect form for this trial, and Team Happy Campers had eaten utter shit. Ace's gut still quivers when he remembers how her leathery hands had felt rooting around in his abdomen, and the tug-pull- _ rip _ of his liver being liberated from the rest of him (and he'd laughed to see it - if he ever gets out of this place alive, he's definitely getting checked out for cirrhosis).

"Welcome to the Scooby Gang, Officer..." Ace tilts his head to see the name tape on the man's vest. "... Tapp!"

"It's Detective," the man corrects, though not rudely. "Not that it matters much out here, I guess."

Ace's knee-jerk anxiety is smoothed over by the man's inoffensive demeanor, and he breathes a silent sigh of relief. He guesses ritual sacrifice limbo really is the great equalizer. "Not really," Ace agrees. He sits on a log across from Tapp. "Name's Ace. So, what're you in for, Detective?"

Tapp seems amused at the turn of phrase, like they're all prisoners stuck behind bars of spacetime bullshit. "If I'm here for a reason, it's probably because I let my convictions cloud my judgment."

Ace nods, respecting the vague non-answer. 

Tapp laughs humorlessly, staring into the middle distance. "That, or I'm dead."

Ace is about to laugh off the morbid declaration, but - hell, what does he know? Maybe dead people  _ can _ come here. And then he thinks, with slow-mounting dread: could that be  _ him _ ? For the people hunting Ace, a quick and unannounced bullet to the back of the head was pretty standard fare. Ace would never know, if it had been quick. "You think?" he asks, smile faltering briefly as he genuinely considers the possibility. This could easily be Hell, and not just figuratively. Ace would probably deserve it, too.

"Considering the last thing I remember was bleeding out from a bullet wound? Yeah, I'd say it's a possibility." Tapp turns to Ace. His eyes are dark and wise. This guy has definitely seen his share of humbling and gutting truths. "What about you?"

"Huh? Oh," Ace recovers with a rakish grin. "Pissed off the wrong people and made a run for it. Ended up here, somehow."

Tapp gives him a knowing smile as he picks up a stick and stokes the heatless fire. "Ace, huh? Sounds like a gambler's name..."

"Oh! Would you look at the time," Ace says, lifting his sleeve to check a watch he doesn't have. "Gotta say, it's been a pleasure meeting you, Detective." Ace thrusts his hand out, and Tapp shakes his head as he shakes Ace's hand. "But I've got a maybe-cigarette with my name on it. Try not to get murdered!" He offers Tapp a half-salute as he beats a quick retreat to Bill's corner of the clearing.

Bill is laughing when he walks up. "Where's the fire, hotshot?" 

Ace shoves his hands in his pockets. "Same place it always is," he grumbles.

"Don't get cute," Bill says. "Just had a feeling a cop would put your hackles up where the killers failed to."

Ace fiddles with his deck in his pocket. "Yeah, yeah. Lucky guess."

Bill laughs again. "C'mon, let me have this."

"I'll trade you that feeling of superiority for a cigarette," Ace pitches.

To his delighted surprise, Bill actually pulls out his pack and holds it out to him. "Sure. I heard the Hag cleaned the floor with you."

Ace snorts, reaching for the cigarette. It’s a struggle to stifle his hand tremors. "If that's what she's using our livers for, she's not gonna get much juice out of mine." He supposes it would be too much to hope that Bill smoked menthols, but he wasn't about to be choosy now. "Gotta light?"

Bill digs in his pocket. "C'mere," he says, and Ace is startled by the way his pulse jumps when he realizes Bill intends to light it for him.

Ace presses the filter between his lips and leans forward as Bill brings the cheery little flame to the end of the cigarette. Bill's hands are pretty big, and the lighter is on the smaller side, so his knuckles tickling the edges of Ace's beard is a special kind of inevitable that Ace is happy to walk right into. Ace's eyes droop shut as he inhales, drawing the heat and fire into the little paper tube and igniting the tobacco.

He leans back and blows the smoke into the air, watching it disappear into the dark, starless sky. The intensity of the hit is unreal. He hadn’t gone this long without a cigarette since he picked up his first one. The rush is euphoric. Ace groans rapturously, and Bill scowls. "Quit that."

"Let me have this," Ace echoes, and surprise number two comes when Bill does, in fact, let him have his moment.

Bill lights up too, and they stand at the edge of the clearing, smoking in companionable silence. Ace glances over, voyeurism concealed by the tint of his sunglasses. His chin hair still tickles, and he fights the urge to scratch away the ghostly sensation of Bill's knuckles there. Tries not to imagine the way Bill's coarse hands would feel on his face.

Ace cringes inwardly. Christ, but he's a mess. He  _ really _ didn't want to dip his toes in the tepid kiddie pool of sober celibacy - but the nightmare is a  _ brutal  _ rehab clinic. He can't remember the last time he went this long without getting laid or blackout drunk. He’d considered handling himself alone in the woods, but he wasn’t about to be caught with his pants around his ankles by a killer.

When the bright orange cherry is a third of the way down the cigarette, Ace belatedly remembers his manners. He clears his throat. "Uh, thanks. For the cigarette."

Bill grunts around his own cigarette, and smoke billows out his nose. He's like an old wizened dragon, Ace thinks, amused. "Don't mention it," says Bill.

_ Do you want to get out of here? _ Ace is saved from saying by the smoke in his lungs. But he can't help choking at how close he was to  _ actually saying it _ .

"Don't hurt yourself," Bill says.

"Trying," Ace wheezes. "Been a while."

This is ridiculous, Ace thinks. All these mopey young people nobly forsaking rubbing alcohol and quick trysts in the woods... Their martyrdom must be rubbing off on him. Since when has he ever denied himself anything? And if this place really is Hell, then they're already here, aren't they? What else is there to punish them for?

Ace admits he’s not being fair. It's possible the others  _ are _ fooling around, and they're just being discreet about it. And if they are fucking, they’re certainly not fucking him. Either way, Ace can't see the point in discretion about that sort of thing, but what does he know? The rest of them are obviously from a different-minded generation.

Bill, though. Bill might get it. He came from a post-zombie apocalypse world, so surely  _ he'll  _ see value in being straightforward about one’s needs?

One thing's for sure: all this fretting is preventing Ace from enjoying his hard-won cigarette.

Ace takes a long drag, then turns to Bill with a coy grin. And he says, “Do you want to get out of here?”

Bill laughs in genuine surprise, raucous and loud enough that every head in the clearing turns to them for at least a few seconds. Ace wants badly to play it off like he'd just told a great joke, and look how clever and hilarious he is, making the gruff old-timer laugh! But his neck turns red in embarrassment before he can try to salvage his reaction, and he goes back to smoking his cigarette in dejected silence.

It tastes bitter and shameful.

Eventually Bill catches his breath, wheezing and coughing and slapping Ace's back. When he finally responds, his breathless humor makes him too quiet for the others to hear. "A cigarette's all it takes for you, huh?"

"What," Ace asks with mock-offense, having regained his composure by the time Bill caught his breath, "these dashing good looks don't do it for you?" Ace strokes his beard as if to say,  _ 'behold, my dashing good looks'. _

"Shut it," Bill says as he descends into another fit of wheezing laughter. "Yer gonna give this old man a heart attack."

"Well, lucky for us you'll come right back from it."

Bill straightens and shakes his head. He looks at Ace with his brows drawn up in disbelief, but his eyes are still crinkled with laughter. Even if it was at the expense of his dignity, Ace thinks it might've been worth it to see a rare smile from the older man. "You're a hot mess, Ace. Y'know that?"

" _ That's _ never been in question," Ace agrees. Bill doesn’t even seem to suspect Ace’s offer might have been genuine. It must have come too close on the heels of Ace’s pornographic enjoyment of his cigarette. He sucks on it, watching the cherry close in on the filter and feeling unaccountably betrayed by the thing.

Ah, oh well. He’s put a worm in Bill’s ear. Maybe the old man will catch himself thinking about it, and the next time Ace makes the offer, Bill will actually take it into consideration.

… Or he’ll laugh at him again, Ace thinks with a wince. At least next time he'll be ready to play it off as a joke. And it'll be nice to see the curmudgeonly old war vet crack a smile again, anyway.

* * *

This can't be right.

She can't have  _ failed.  _ She gave up everything -  _ everything _ \- for him _. _ Her vices. Her ego. Her  _ life. _

To know it had all been a trick, another of his games - that he would levy his sense of righteous justice against even  _ her _ , make her believe he felt more fondness for a worthless, adultering surgeon than  _ her... _ It makes her blood boil. It makes her want to scream and kick and fumble open her kit, and bring her knife to her thighs until she runs red,  _ red - _

Her mentor’s betrayal is simply unthinkable. Amanda squeezes her eyes shut, and she begs for it to be a lie.

Fog clouds her mind like a drug, rushes through her veins like a hit after spending too long sober. She breathes deep, feels her whole body sing with it.

She opens her eyes, and she finds herself on a forest floor.

Humid air slips between her clothes, makes it stick tackily to her skin. Slowly, Amanda rises to her feet, using a nearby tree trunk for leverage. The bark is rough, and it scrapes her palm. She could scrape her knuckles against it and cut them open, if she tried.

She considers trying. But the itch to draw blood is subsiding in the wake of her confusion.

Where is she?

Amanda doesn’t recognize the trees. She’s certain she’s never been here. And yet, with more certainty than she’s ever felt before, Amanda knows where she has to go. Picking her way over dead leaves and gnarled roots, she tries to remember how she arrived here. But there’s nothing in her memory that sheds light on her situation.

A gust of icy wind sends a shiver up Amanda’s spine. Absently, she draws her coat’s red hood over her head, and when she pulls her hand away, she inadvertently brushes the side of her neck.

Remembered pain erupts in her mind like a busted pipe, hissing and steaming up her brain behind her eyes. Amanda clutches her head. It comes back to her.

The idiot survived John’s game, when she’d made  _ sure _ he wouldn’t. Another mistake to add to her mountain of mistakes. Amanda killed his wife, so he killed Amanda. Shot her through the neck.

Amanda feels herself choking, feels the life spilling out from a hole in her throat.

But when she masters her pain and touches her neck to be sure, her hands come away dry.

She doesn’t understand.

Had she died? Died just in time to know how deeply she’d disappointed her mentor? She rails against the thought, but she cannot deny it. Its devastating truth cuts at her, makes her feel small. Amanda’s heart pounds with fear, her mind flooding with despair - but before she can submit to it, that thread of certainty tugs on her with renewed urgency. Amanda clings to it like a lifeline and drags herself to its source.

When the fog dissipates and Amanda steps clear of the tree line, the sight that greets her beggars belief.

It cannot  _ be  _ what it is, and yet its shape and structure are unmistakable.

It’s the Gideon Meatpacking Plant.

Longing and self-loathing well up inside her in equal measure. This place marked her greatest achievement. Her deepest sorrow.

For Amanda to enter it would be unthinkable. An unclean soul crossing a holy threshold. A knight errant returning to its former lord, disgraced.

Amanda is not worthy to enter.

But she has nowhere else to go.

So she goes in.

The air inside is drier, warmer. There is a strange stillness that belies the absence of anyone else. Amanda is incalculably alone.

Still, she returns to the hall that was their bedroom and workshop, hoping beyond hope that John might be there, too. He had to be. She had been devoted utterly to him. He had doted on her, taught her, admired her for defeating his traps and acknowledged her worth when no one else ever had.

And the last thing Amanda remembered was reaching out for him. Wasn’t that why she was here? Because John had one last trick up his sleeve? 

But Amanda arrives and hears no one, sees nothing to indicate the presence of another human life. Instead, something else draws her attention.

In her years as John’s apprentice, Amanda cultivated a meticulous sense of attention to detail. Any room Amanda had previously visited, she could revisit and catalogue every change that had taken place in her absence, if she cared to. Usually if a room had only been disturbed by air currents, Amanda could tell by the way dust gathered differently in the corners.

It takes a moment for her to identify what looks wrong, because she’s never seen anything like it before. But it looks as if someone walked every single inch of the building - from floors to walls and  _ ceilings _ . Amanda struggles to reconcile the uncanny appearance of the meatpacking plant with a reasonable explanation.

Even as her mind brushes up against the thoughts requisite to unravel the mystery, that sense of purpose in her chest returns suddenly and powerfully, tugging her to the alcove refurbished long ago to be her sleeping area.

Amanda’s breath catches in her throat when she sees what is on the bed:

Her mask.

The one John had given her -  _ bestowed  _ upon her, as a master ought outfit his apprentice with the uniform of their profession. Amanda crawls onto the bed, approaching the pig’s head with the wet-eyed devotion of a mother seeing her newborn child.

Amanda gathers the mask in her arms and settles back against her pillows. John had explained its significance when he gave it to her. About the Gideon Meatpacking Plant, about new beginnings and his hopes for a legacy.

Amanda can’t deny the pride she takes in wearing it, knowing what it meant to John. But to her, it also represents the piggish nature of the putrid human race. People are incapable of genuine change. They’re only valuable as meat, or pawns. They don’t deserve the artistry of John’s engineering.

Seeing the mask again makes Amanda’s doubts vanish. Why would it be here, if not because John still accepted her as his apprentice? No, as his  _ replacement? _

The pieces line up, then, and something inside Amanda clicks into place. Where the longing and self-loathing had once been, a new conviction steals into her heart, and it settles there like a sun-warmed stone.

She was right, of course. She always had been.

John's disappointment was his final test - a test to see if Amanda could remain true to her moral convictions and see through the lie, see that he really  _ was _ proud of her, and that despite their differences he was  _ honored  _ to pass his legacy onto her.

And this is her chance to continue his work, to mold it into the shape it will take in Amanda's capable hands. Amanda turns the mask toward her, and she stares into the empty shadows of the pig’s hollow eyes.

Just like the new shape John's work would take, Amanda would take a new shape, too. The spiral-cheeked puppet had been the face of Jigsaw. The Pig would be the face of Amanda. She would  _ become  _ it.

It doesn't take long to find the workbench -  _ her _ work bench, now. She always knew that she'd surpass John's other apprentices, that Mark was the pretender, and she simply the late bloomer - but oh, how she'd  _ bloomed. _

Amanda can see now that John's limitations had been a cocoon. It’s only now that she’s broken free that she can achieve her final metamorphosis - the one John had always secretly, knowingly intended for her.

Tears threaten to spill, but she refrains from showing weakness. John would know, wouldn't he? And he wouldn't want Amanda to be ungrateful for the gift he's so graciously given her.

The gift of his legacy. She smiles with rapturous devotion, even as she dutifully gathers the tools of her trade and sets to work.

Amanda will prove that she's worthy of it.


End file.
